Flippin’ optical lens to make background image come into focus

[Steve Roberts]

Off the top of my head, you could try this:

1. apply a circular mask to a solid and adjust its size to what you want
2. move the anchor point (using the pan behind tool) offscreen. This solid will represent the rotating lens.
3. create an adjustment layer below the solid, and make the solid the track matte for the adjustment layer.
4. apply a blur effect to the adjustment layer
5. make sure the footage is below the adjustment layer
6. animate the rotation of the circular solid

Give ‘er a go …

[Eric Christians]

Thanks Steve and Dave,

I will try your ideas first thing in the morning…Boss just popped his head in my office and said, “Go Home – No Overtime for you!”

Damn that soup nazi! ha ha ha

Thanks for the help…I am seeing clearly now the rain is gone…

Will let you know the results when I sit down again and play with AE in the morning…

Thanks
KTTC-Red

[Chris Smith]

Adding to what Steve and Dave said, I would use a radial gradient as the input to a displacement map so that the image distorts on the edges of the lens and also use the “lens blur” in AE7 instead of the Gauss blur for a more optical look.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Steve Roberts]

Indeed, Chris. It should help sell the effect to have a bit of distortion as the lens moves into place.

[Eric Christians]

Good Morning!

Well after a while of tinkering I think I came up with a solution to my optical lens problem. On my drive home after work I remember coming across a tutorial here on the cow by Colin James (Creating a Glassy Look) for making those neat glass panes as seen on the opening for CSI: miami. So this morning I dug up the tutorial and with it and the posting from Dave LaRonde I came up with a doable optical lens effect. Instead of going with two lens I opted for just one lens since this better fitted the script. Two or more lens are possible but I am limited on time to complete this commercial. Perhaps when I am less busy I will plutz with the effect again.

In a nut shell I made a comp called FINI with my usual dimensions and desired length. I took the footage I wanted and dropped it in the time line and then duplicated the footage layer. To the bottom layer I added a guassian blur of about 6. I then added a new white solid to the timeline and double clicking on the oval mask button got an oval of the solid. I made this solid layer 3D and then added keyframes for its animation. Keeping it simple I used the pan behind tool and move the anchor point off screen right and keyframed the z rotation to get the oval solid to wipe on.
I selected the oval solid layer and pre-comped it and called it Glass Setup 1. In the FINI comp I alpha track matted the non-blurry footage layer to the Glass Setup 1 precomp. Scrubbing the timeline I could see that the the footage started out blurry then the clear footage wiped on in an oval shape. -Thanks Dave
From there I followed Colin James’ Glassy Look Tutorial to achieve the beveled edges. Slight modifications of course so the beveled edges appeard correctly on screen and the I used two beveled edges instead of just one to seperate the lens from the footage. Striving for clarity I kept transparency I made the Glass Setup-MATERIALS comp low like 15-20%. Again if I had more time I am could have played around more with the settings. -Thanks Colin

Here is a link to a sample clip I posted on YouTube of the effect that I created with great help from Dave, Colin, Steve and Chris. You guys Rock!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj70FSdHM8I

Any questions, post to this thread and I will try my hand to clarify.

Thanks
KTTC-Red

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[Steve Roberts]

Looks good. I’d suggest making the blur stronger, so it doesn’t look like a mistake. But … maybe it would be good to also include something sharp like numbers in the frame (termovision?) to make the blur look deliberate. No big deal, though.

Thanks very much for showing your results. We always like to see solutions. 🙂